Less is more

Last Sunday morning, out jogging early in a virtually deserted Geneva City, I came across four English-speakers walking in the middle of the street. Drunk out of their minds, they were apparently staggering toward some reference point they could still manage to hold on to in what remained of their consciousness, perhaps a cab stand or an apartment where they could all crash.

The two men and two women, in their 30s, young professionals by the look of them, were wearing expensive brand clothing. Walking was proving particularly difficult for the women, in their short tight skirts and stiletto heels.

As I said, all four had reached the point in their drunkenness - been there, so I know what it feels like - where each was holding on with all their energy to some fixed point, something to head to, before they passed out. They were well beyond the boisterous back-slapping mood of generalized lurching hilarity. This was one grim group.

Suddenly one of the women went down like a sack of potatoes. The thud was so resounding, I wondered if I shouldn’t call emergency services: surely she must be hurt. She didn’t seem to be, however. She was flailing around with her big handbag trying to get up.

The other woman hobbled towards her, seemingly preoccupied with giving her friend some dignity by trying to pull her skirt down (it had risen up over her hips in the fall). She teetered and swayed, looking as if she were about to collapse on top of her or throw up. With what remained of her ability to speak she kept repeating, out to get pissed, well we really really got pissed, didn’t we, really really pissed.

The men stumbled back and somehow managed to pull the fallen woman to her feet.

I passed the group and turned the corner, so they were out of my hearing range and sight - but not mind. For one thing, I was chagrined by the loud boorish image of expats they presented. It fuels what all too many continental Europeans think already, even when the expats are stone cold sober.

More saliently, I was repulsed by the spectacle of degraded humanity, and the perverse denial inherent to binge drinking as to what is really going on. Instead of perceiving themselves as needy, greedy and deluded, bingers usually pin a label of ‘cool’ and ‘fun’ on the activity, even -  if they have the wherewithal to dress expensively and shell out hundreds if not thousands at ‘in’ watering holes on just one binge - ‘sophisticated’, as if getting expensively sloshed in the right places were part of the desirable entitlements of success.

Binge drinking English, Aussie or American style - with the intention declared or tacit at the start of an evening by even well-heeled adults to go out and get smashed - is still something of a rarity in Switzerland. But increasingly less so, indeed it is now starting to be perceived as a problem.

The other day I attended a press conference given by the organizers of Geneva’s huge annual summer bash, the Fetes de Geneve, and the subject of drunkenness was for the first time addressed as a high priority issue. Various measures to discourage it, and contain it when it was observed, had been introduced.

And recently after the annual Open House Day of Geneva’s wineries, the issue of drunkenness specifically among English-speakers made the local press when winemakers complained that many of said English-speakers attended not to taste and buy wines, which is the whole point, but were using the event like a giant free party to get as drunk as they could. The winemakers were thinking of adopting measures next year that would prevent free-loading and keep drunks at bay.

I’ve written a lot in this blog about aware eating and drinking, not only from a health point of view, and how the eat/drink choices we make impact our environment and others, but also from the standpoint of life-enhancement: taking the time to ensure not only that what we eat and drink is really good but to savor it properly. Another way of saying less is more.

That’s not just my take, it’s a pretty Zeitgeisty thing and it incorporates the idea of assuming responsibility, raising our level of consciousness, and in so doing tapping into a deeply meaningful existence that among other things renders obsolete the compulsion to get bladdered because the stress and inner void of our lives, even when extremely comfortable materially, makes us needy and greedy and is just more than we can stand.

The Zeitgeist still has a lot of work to do, as my encounter with that horrific foursome the other morning showed me, but ever the optimist yes, surely, he/she will, must, get there in the end.